



^*.>* /J^'-. %/ :^r. %,** -V 




















'-^o^ 



;♦ <&' 







o». *.. 






.^■•"-••,*°o /..^^.V /.:;.:^.> w<'^;:.\. 










\<f' ' 




v^.^ 

















^j>^ "^ *r 
















"^^'''^^'V 



'^^ r 






-^o^ 

^^•^^. 






'*^f^^^^^ -o/^r^^o'^ 








^o*.,.\-. -^o 














.s-; 






^> ^ 






..^^ 


















^<*^^ 






.J 






.%^ 



ll^ 



.**' .'-^ti/'V c<'-'.^-."'^° 



-^'-. * ,-> 






!.♦ •?: 






Ik cv • * * * 



*Ao^ 






' 1 







■Cv*^ «> * d 



&"" *y 











aV 












^^. 







.<• 



lH°^. 



^ 



Ur-. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR 
Franklin K. Lane, Secretary 





■J 



GLIMPSES 

of our 

NATIONAL 
PARKS 





CONTENTS 






Page 




Page 


I. 


—The National Parks .... 3 


VIII.— The Glacier National Park. . 


34 


II. 


—The Yellowstone National Park . 9 


IX. — The Rocky Mountain National 




III.- 


—The Yosemite National Park . 16 


Park 


37 


IV. 


— The Sequoia National Park . . 20 


X. — The Grand Canyon (National 




V. 


—Mount Rainier National Park . . 23 


monument administered by 




VI. 


— Crater Lake National Park . . 27 


Department of Agriculture) . 


42 


VII. 


—The Mesa Verde National Park . 30 


XI. — The Hot Springs Reservation . 


46 



WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 

1916 



dii-«>ii<>l<><i-i<'sill>' in tlio ox-tloi- of t lit-i i- <'i"o:« t ion 

[Number, 14; Total Area, 7,290 Square Miles] 



NATIONAL 




AREA 




PA U KS 

in order of 

creation 


LOCATION 


in 
square 
miles 


DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS 


Hot Springs 


Middle 


li 


46 hot springs possessing curative properties— Many hotels and 


is:i2 


Arkansas 




boarding houses— 20 bathhouses under public control. 


Vellowstoiie 


North- 


3,348 


More geysers than in all rest of world together — Boiling 


1S72 


west ern 




springs — Mud volcanoes — l^etrified forests — Grand Canyon 




Wyoniinf; 




of the Yellowstone, remarkable for gorgeous coloring— Large 
lakes— Many large streams and waterfalls— Vast wilderness 
inhabited by deer, elk, bi.son, moose, antelope, bear, moun- 
tain sheep, beaver, etc., constituting greatest wild bird and 
animal preserve in world— Altitude 6,000 to 11,000 feet- 
Exceptional trout fishing. 


Yosemite 


Middle 


1, 125 


Valley of world-famed beauty — LoftvclifTs — Romantic vistas — 


1890 


eastern 




Many waterfalls of extraordinary height — 3 groves of big 




California 




trees — High Sierra — Large areas of snowy peaks— Waterwheel 
falls — Good trout fishing. 


Sequoia 


Middle 


237 


The Big Tree national park — 12,000 sequoia trees over 10 feet in 


1890 


eastern 




diameter, some 25 to 36 feet in diameter — Towering momitain 




California 




ranges — Startling precipices — Fine trout fishing. 


General Grant 


Middle 


4 


Created to preserve the celebrated General Grant Tree, 35 feet 


1890 


eastern 




in diameter— 6 miles from Sequoia National Park and under 




California 




same management. 


Moimt Rainier 


West 


324 


Largest accessible single peak glacier system— 28 glaciers, some 


1899 


central 




of large size— Forty-eight square miles of glacier, fifty to five- 




Washington 




hundred feet thick — Wonderful sub-alpine wild flower fields. 


Crater Lake 


South- 


249 


Lake of extraordinary blue in crater of extinct volcano, no 


1902 


western 




inlet, no outlet— Sides 1,000 feet high— Interesting lava for- 




Oregon 




mations—Fine trout fishing. 


Mesa Verde 


South- 


77 


Most notable and best preserved prehistoric cliff dwellings in 


1906 


western 
Colorado 




United States, if not in the world. 


Piatt 


Southern 


li 


Many sulphur and other springs possessing medicinal value, 
under Government regulation. 


1906 


Oklahoma 


Glacier 


North- 


1,534 


Rugged mountain region of unsurpassed Alpine character — 
250 glacier-fed lakes of romantic beauty— 60 small glaciers- 


I9in 


western 






Montana 




Peaks of unusual shape— Precipices thousands of feet deep- 
Almost sensational scenery of marked individuality — Fine 
trout fishing. 


Rocky Mountain. 


North 


358 


Heart of the Rockies — Snowy range, peaks 11,000 to 14,2.50 feet 


1915 


middle 
Colorado 




altitude — Remarkable records of glacial period. 



National Parks of less popular interest are: 

Sullys Hill, 1904, North Dakota Wooded hilly tract on Devils Lake. 

Wind Cave, 1903, South Dakota Large natural cavern. 

Casa Grande Ruin, 1S92, Arizona Prehistoric Indian ruin. 

^ D. of D. 

JUN 1^. 1916 



10 



DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR 

FRANKLIN K. LANE, Seceetaey 



GLIMPSES OF OUR NATIONAL PARKS 

By Robert Sterling Yard 



THE NATIONAL PARKS 

npHE national parks are areas which Congress has set apart. l)ecanse 

-'- of extraordinary scenic beauty, remarkable phenomena or other 

unusual qualification, for the use and enjoyment of the people for 

all time. They are administered by the Department of the Interior. 

These are not parks in the common meaning of the word. They are 
not beautiful tracts of cultivated country with smooth lawns and 
winding paths like Central Park in New York, or Lincoln Park in 
Chicago, or Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. They are. on the 
contrary, large areas which nature, not man, has made beautiful and 
which the hand of man alters only enough to provide roads to enter 
them, trails to penetrate their fastnesses, and hotels and camps to 
live in. 

There are fourteen national parks, of which eight are of the first 
order of size and scenic magnificence — which means a great deal 
in a land so beautiful as ours. Every person living in the United 
States ought to know much about these eight national parks and 
ought to visit them when possible, for, considered together, the}' con- 
tain more features of conspicuous grandeur than are readily accessible 
in all the rest of the world together ; while, considered individually, 
there are few, if any, celebrated scenic places within easy reach 
abroad Avhich are not equaled or excelled in America. Even the far- 
famed Swiss Alps are equaled, and. some travelers believe, excelled 
by the scenery of several of our own national parks. 

SCENERY OF THE FIRST ORDER 

We have said that in some respects American scenery is unequaled 
abroad. There are more geysers of large size in our Yellowstone 
National Park, for instance, than in all the rest of the world together, 
the nearest approach being the geyser fields of Iceland and far New 
Zealand. Again, it is conceded the Avorld over that there is no valley 

3 



4 OUK NATIONAL PAKKS, 

in existence so strilvingly beautil'ul :;s our Yosemite Valley, and 
nowhere else can be found a canyon of such size and exquisite coloring 
as our (Jrand Canyon of the Colorado. In the Sequoia National 
Park grow trees so huge and old that none quite compare with them. 
These are well-known facts with which every American ought to be 
familiar. 

The eight national \)n\ks of the first order ai'e the Mount IJainier 
National Park in M'ashington, the Crater Lake National Park in 
Oivgon. the Yosemite and Seciuoia National Parks in California, the 
(Jhicier National Park in Montana, the Yellowstone National Park, 
principally in Wyoming, and the Rocky Mountain and Mesa Verde 
National l^irks in Colorado. AVith these must be classed the (irand 
Canyon of the Colorado in Arizona, which, though still remaining a 
national monument, is one of the great wonders of the world. 

The principal dilference between a national monument and a 
national park is that tlie former has merely been made safe from 
encroachment by private interests and enterprise, while the latter is 
also in process of development by roads and trails and hotels, so as to 
become a convenient resort for the people to visit and enjoy. 

EACH A PERSONALITY OF ITS OWN 

One of the striking and interesting features of the eight greater 
national i^arks of our country is that each one of them is quite dif- 
ferent from all the others; each has a marked personality of its own. 

Mount liainier, for instance, is an extinct volcano down the sides 
of which flow twenty-eight glaciers, or rivers of ice. 

Crater Lake fills with water of astonishing blue the hole left when 
the top of ]\Iount Mazama, another volcano in the same chain as 
Mount Painier. was swallowed up in some far distant past. 

The Yosemite National Park, in addition to its celebrated Yo- 
semite Valley and lofty waterfalls, has in the north a river called 
the Tuolumne which spouts wheels of water fifty feet and more into 
the air. It has great areas of snow-topped mountains. 

The Sequoia National Park contains more than a million sequoia 
trees, of which 12,000 are more than ten feet in diameter, and some 
twice that and several from twenty-five to thirty-six feet through 
from side to side. Measure thirty-six feet on the sidewalk and see 
what that means. Some of these trees are older than human history. 

The (ilacier National Park was made by the earth cracking in 
some far distant time and one side thrusting up and overlapping the 
other. It has clitfs several thousand feet high and more than sixty 
glaciers feed hundreds of lakes. One lake floats icebergs all summer. 
This scenery is truly Alpine. 

The Yellowstone National Park, beside its geysers, has many hot 
springs which l)uil(l glistening plateaus of highly colored mineral 



OUR N"ATIOXAL PARKS. 




The Highest Watekfall in the Would, Yosemite National Pakk 

The Upper Yosemite Fall drops 1,430 feet slieer, nearly as high os nine Niagaras 
piled one above the other. The Lower Yosemite Fall drops 320 feet. Their 
combined height, including intermediate cascades and rapids, is half a mile 



OUR NATIOXAL PAEKS. 




NATIONAL PARKS 

AND 
PRINCIPAL RAILROAD CONNECTIONS 



deposits. It has a canyon o-orgeoiis Avith all the colors and shades 
of the rainbow, and it is literally the greatest Avild animal sanctuary 
in the Avorld. 

The Ivocky ^Mountain Xational Park straddles the Continental 
Di\ide at a lofty height, with snow-capped mountains extending 
from end to end. Its glacier records are remarkable. 

The Mesa Verde National Park hides in its barren canyons the 
well-preserved ruins of a civilization which passed out of existence so 
many centuries ago that not even tradition recalls its people. 

It Avill be seen that one may visit a new national park each year 
for nearly a decade and see something (juite new and remarkable at 
each visit. 

HOTELS AND CAMPS 

The maj) Avill show Avhere these national parks are located. They 
are all ujion lines of railways and are easily and comfortably reached 
from any part of the Ignited States. Each of them is in charge of a 
resident supervisor who has under his charge enough park rangers 
to protect the forests from fire, the Avild animals from hunters, and 
the visitoi's from harm. There are good roads in all of these parks, 
and hotels or public camps or both where visitors may stay as long as 
they like to enjoy the scenery and study nature. Trails are built 
to the waterfalls, up the highest moimtains, and, in short, wherever 
especially fine views may l)e found. ()\er these trails visitors may 
Avalk or ride on horseback as they prefer. 



OUR NATIONAL PARKS. 



Many of the hotels are fine ones where every hixury may be had 
by those who insist upon luxuries even in the wilderness. There are 
often cheaper hotels also, and in the great public camps visitors may 
live very comfortably indeed and quite economically. One may go 
to these camps just as to a 
hotel, only he is assigned a 
comfortable tent instead of a 
room, and eats his meals at a 
big table in a big dining tent. 
There is another big tent, 
usually, to serve as a general 
living room. At night a camp 
fire is built in the woods, and 
all gather around it to sing 
and tell stories. Many per- 
sons who can easily afford the 
luxurious hotels live in the 
camps because they prefer 
doing so. 

The Department of the In- 
terior, which has all the na- 
tional parks in its care, is 
trying to make them popular 
and comfortable and available 
for people of all degrees of 
income. 

Not only should these i>arks 
be the best and most fully 
patronized health and pleas- 
ure resorts in the United 
States, but they should also 
become great centers of nature 
stud3\ In the national parks 
only is nature most carefully 
conserved exactly as designed. 
No trees are cut down for 
lumber, as in the national 
forests outside the parks, but 
are allowed to reach their 
utmost size and age. No ani- 
mals are killed except moun- 
tain lions and other predatory 
beasts which destroy the deer 
and young elk. Here, then, 
the student and the lover of 
nature may study nature in 




I'hotosi-apb by rillsbury 

The Lakgest and Oldest Living Thing 

IX the Would 

The General Sherman Tree in the Sequoia 

National Parli, diameter 36.5 feet 



8 OUR NATIONAL PARKS. 

her pristine beauty and under conditions Avliich else^Yhere exist only 
in the few remote hinds not yet invaded by man. 

To these national parks, then, the Department of the Interixir 
invites the student, amateur and professional alike. 

NATIONAL PARKS AND NATIONAL FORESTS 

One must not confuse the national forests with the national parks. 
The national forests aggregate many times the area of the national 
parks. They were created to administer lumbering and grazing 
interests for the people; the lumbering, instead of being done by pri- 
vate interests often ruthlessly for private profit, as in the past, is 
now done under regiilations which conserve the public interest. The 
trees are cut in accordance with the ])rinciples of scientific forestry, 
which conserve the smaller trees until they grow to a certain size, 
thus perpetuating the forests. Sheep, horses, or cattle graze in all 
pastures under governmental regulation, while in national i)arks 
horses and cattle only may be admitted where not detrimental to the 
enjoyment and preservation of the scenery. Regular hunting is per- 
mitted in season in the national forests, but never in the national 
parks. In short, the national parks, unlike the national forests, 
are not properties in a commercial sense, but natural preserves for the 
rest, recreation, and education of the peo]>le. They remain under 
nature's OAvn chosen conditions. They alone maintain '' the forest 
primeval." 

Lovers of sport also find their national parks rich fields of pleasure, 
provided they do their hunting onl,y with the camera. This is en- 
couraged; and there are no other places in the world where wild 
animals may be approached so closel^^ In the Yellowstone, where 
shooting has been strictly prohibited since 1872, one may with rea- 
sonable care and precaution photogi-aph deer at close quarters, ap- 
proach elk and antelope and even moose and bison near enough for 
good pictures. 

BIRDS AND WILD ANIMALS 

The lesson of the Yellowstone is that wild animals greatly fear 
man only when man is cruel and murderous. Another lesson from 
national parks experience is that no wild animal will injure human 
beings except in self-defense. Even the gi-izzly bear, which we were 
brought up to believe an aggressive, ferocious animal, is found to 
be entirely shy and harmless except when violently assaulted. The 
monster cat of our rock fastnesses — the mountain lion — big enough 
and powerful enough to drag down a full-grown elk, is one of the 
most timid of all the beasts in the national parks, flying at gTeat 
speed at the first sight or scent of man. 

The national parks cover a great area, 4,065,960 acres in all. If 
all were put together it would mean an area of 7,290 square miles. 



OUR NATIONAL PARKS, 9 

as large, nearly, as the State of Xew Jersey. The Yellowstone Na- 
tional Park alone contains more than 3,300 sqnare miles, and is as 
big as many of the independent Enropean principalities that warred 
with each other for centuries before the genius of Bismarck united 
them into a great empire. 

Such a group of scenic areas, if developed and handled after the 
fashion of Switzerland, for instance, will constitute a national eco- 
nomic asset of incalculable value. 

GENEKAL INFORMATION BULLETINS 

The following descriptions of some of our national parks are not 
intended to be exhaustive. In each, those characteristics are em- 
phasized which individualize the park, distinguishing it from others. 
Any person who wishes to know more about any national park than 
is here available, who wishes, for instance, to know the particular 
traveling and living facilities in each and the expense of a visit 
thereto, should write to the Secretary of the Interior for the Gen- 
eral Information ])ulletin of the particular national park in which 
he is interested. It will be sent free. 

II 

THE YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK 

Special Characteristics: Geysers and Hot Springs; Wonderfully Colored 
Canyon; Largest Wild Bird and Animal Befuge 

THE Yellowstone Xational Park, which lies principally in Wyo- 
ming, is the most widely celebrated of all our national parks 
because it contains more and greater geysers than all the rest of the 
Avorld together. The geyser fields next in size are in Iceland and 
Xew Zealand. The rest are inconspicuous. 

Geysers are, roughly speaking, water volcanoes. They occur only 
at places where the internal heat of the earth approaches close to 
the surface. Their action, for so many years unexplained, and even 
now regarded with wonder by so many, is simple. Water from the 
surface trickling through cracks in the rocks, or water from subter- 
ranean springs collecting in the bottom of the geyser's crater, down 
among the strata of intense heat, becomes itself intensely heated and 
gives otf steam, which expands and forces upwai'd the cooler Avater 
that lies above it. This makes rooui for the more rapid formation of 
steam which innnediately gathers under enormous pressure. 

It is then that the water at the surface of the geyser begins to bub- 
ble and give off clouds of steam, the sign to the watchers above that 
the geyser is about to play. 
32164°— 16 2 



10 OUR NATIONAL PARKS. 

At last tlu> Avater in the bottom reaches so great an expansion 
under continued heat that the less heated water above can no longer 
weigh it down, so it bursts upward with great A'iolence, rising many 
feet in the air and continuing to play until practically all the water 
in the crater has been expelled. Si)ring water, or the same water 
cooled and falling back to the ground, again seeps through the sur- 
face to gather as before in the crater's depth, and in a greater or less 
time, according to difficulties in the way of its return, becomes 
reheated to the bursting point, when the geyser spouts again. 

One may make a geyser with a test tube and a Bunsen burner. The 
Department of the Interior has built a small model geyser mounted 
on a wooden table which, when heat is applied to the metal i-etort on 
the floor, plays at regular intervals of about a minute and a quarter. 
The same water returns again and again to tlie retort, becomes re- 
heated, and is again spouted into the air. This model, by the way, 
has been named Young Faithful. 

THE HOT-WATER PHENOMENA 

Xearly the entire Yellowstone region, covering an area of about 
8,300 square miles, is remarkable for its hot-water phenomena. The 
geysers are confined to three basins lying near each other in the 
middle west side of the park, but other hot water manifestations 
occur at more widely separated points. JNIarvelously colored hot 
springs, mud volcanoes, and other strange phenomena are frequent. 
At ]\Iammoth, at Xorris, and at Thumb the hot water has brought 
to the surface quantities of white mineral deposits which build ter- 
races of beautifully incrusted basins high up into the air, often 
engulfing trees of considerable size. Over the edges of these carved 
basins pours the hot water. Microscopic plants called algie grow on 
the edges and sides of these basins, assisting the deposition of the 
mineral matter and painting them hues of red and pink and bluish 
gray, which in warm Aveather glow brilliantly, but in cold Aveather 
almost disappear. At many other points lesser hot springs occur, 
introducing strange, almost uncanny, elements into Avoocled and other- 
wise quite normal landscapes. 

A tour of these hot-Avater formations and spouting geysers is an 
experience never to be forgotten. Some of the geysers play at quite 
regular intervals. For many years the celebrated Old Faithful played 
Avith great regularity every seventy minutes, but during the summer 
of 1015 the interval lengthened to about eighty-five minutes, due. it 
is supposed, to the smaller snoAvfall and consequent lessened Avater 
supply of the preceding Avinter. Some of the largest geysers play at 
ii'regular intervals of days, Aveeks, or months. Some A'ery small ones 
play every few minutes. ]N[any bubbling hot springs, Avhich throAV 



OUR NATIONAL PARKS. 



11 




i'holu.m-aph liy .1. j;. Uayins, St. I'aul 

Old Faithful Geyser. Yellowstone National Pakk 



12 OUR NATIONAL PARKS. 

water two or three feet into the air once or twice a iiiiiiiite, are really 
small, imperfectly formed geysers. 

The hot-siH-ino- terraces are also a rather awe-inspiring spectacle 
Avhen seen for the first time. The visitor may climb upon them and 
pick his way around among the steaming pools. In certain lights 
the surface of these pools appears vividly colored. The deeper hot 
pools are often intensely green. The incrustations are often beauti- 
fully crystallized. Clumps of grass, and even flowers, which have 
been submerged in the charged waters become exquisitely plated, as 
if with frosted silver. 

But the geysers and hot-water formations are by no means the 
only wonders in the Yellowstone. Indeed the entire park is a won- 
derland. Tlie Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone affords a spectacle 
worthy of a national park were there no geysers. But you must 
not confuse your Grand Canyons, of which there are several in our 
wonderful western country. Of these, by far the largest and most 
impressive is the Grand Canyon of the Colorado Eiver, in Arizona. 
That is the one always meant when people speak of visiting " the 
Grand Canyon," without designating a location. It is the giant of 
canyons. 

GRAND CAlSTYOlSr OF THE YELLOWSTONE 

The (irand Canyon of the Yellowstone is altogether different. 
Great though its size, it is much the smaller of the two. What makes 
it a scenic feature of the first order is its marvelously variegated 
coloring. It is the cameo of canyons. 

Standing upon Inspiration Point, which pushes out almost to the 
center of the canyon, one seems to look almost vertically down upon 
the foaming Yellowstone River. To the south a waterfall nearly 
twice the height of Niagara rushes seemingly out of the pine-clad 
hills and ])ours downward to be lost again in green. 

Fr(;m that point two or three miles to where you stand and be- 
neath you widens out the most glorious kaleidoscope of color you 
will even see in nature. The steep slopes dropping on either side 
a thousand feet and more from the pine-toi^ped levels above are 
inconceivably carved and fretted by the frost and the erosion of the 
ages. Sometimes they lie in straight lines at easy angles, from which 
jut high rocky prominences. Sometimes they lie in huge hollows 
carved from the side w^alls. Here and there jagged rocky needles 
rise perpendicularly for hundreds of feet like groups of gothic spires. 

And the whole is colored as brokenly and vividly as the field of a 
kaleidoscope. The whole is streaked and spotted and stratified in 
every shade from the deepest orange to the faintest lemon, from dee]) 
crimson through all the brick shades to the softest pink, from black 
through all the grays and pearls to glistening Avhite. The greens are 



OUR js^ational parks. 



13 




Copyright by J. K. IlayiU'S, f^f. I'aul 

The Gorgeously Coloked Canyon, Yellowstone National I'APac 
Showing the Great Falls of the Yellowstone, 308 feet hl.uh 

furnished by the dark pines above, the lighter shades of growth 
caught here and there in soft masses on the gentler slopes and the 
foaming green of the plunging river so far below. The blues, ever 
changing, are found in the dome of the sky overhead. 

It is a spectacle which one looks upon in silence. 

There are several spots from which fine partial views may be had, 
but no person can say he has seen the canyon who has not stood upon 
Inspiration Point. Remember this when you visit the Yellowstone. 

WILD ANIMALS LIVING NATURALLY 

Another interesting feature of the Yellowstone National Park is its 
wild-animal life. It is the largest and most successful preserve in the 



14 OUR XATIOXAL PARKS. 

> 

world. Its ?>.?)00 square miles of mountains and valleys remain nearly 
as nature made them, for the two hundred miles of roads and the 
seven hotels and many camps are as nothing in this immense wilder- 
ness. Xo tree has been cut except when absolutely necessary for road 
or trail or camp, Xo herds invade its valleys. Xo rifle has been 
fii-ed at a wild animal since the park was established in 1872, except 
by occasional poachers along the border and by the official destroyers 
of predatory beasts. 

Visitors for the most i)art keep to the beaten road, and the wild 
animals have learned in the years that they mean them no harm. 
To be sure, they are seldom seen by the people filling the long trains 
of stages which travel from point to point daily during the season ; 
but the quiet watcher on the trails may see deer and bear and elk 
and antelope to his heart's content, and he may even see mountain 
sheep, moose, and bison by journeying on foot or by horseback into 
their distant retreats. In the fall and springs, when the crowds are 
absent, wild deer gather in great numbers at the hotel clearings to 
crop the grass, and the officers' children feed them flowers. One of 
the diversions at the road builders' camps in the wildernei-s is cul- 
tivating the acquaintance of the animals. There are photographs 
of men feeding sugar to bear cubs while mother bear looks idly on. 

Thus one of the most interesting lessons from the Yellowstone is 
that wild animals are fearful and dangerous only when men treat 
them as game or as enemies. 

BEARS. ELK, MOOSE, DEER, ANTELOPE, AND BISON 

Even the big grizzlies, which are generally believed to be ferocious, 
are proved by our national parks experience to be entirely inoffensive 
if not attacked. Even when attacked they make every possible effort 
to escape, and only turn upon men when finally driven into some 
place from which they can not get away. Then only are they dan- 
gerous, and then they are dangerous indeed. 

The grizzlv bear, by the way, is one of the shyest of Avild animals, 
and may be seen only with difficulty. It lives principally on roots, 
berries, nuts, and honey — when honey may be had. It can not climb 
trees like the brown bears. Its little ones are born in caves where 
bears hibernate through the winters and are little larger than squir- 
rels when they first come into the world. 

The brown, cinnamon, and black bears, which, b}^ the way, are the 
same species only differently colored — the blondes and brunettes, so 
to speak, of the same bear family— are quite different. They are 
playful, comparatively fearless, sometimes even friendly. They are 
greedy fellows and steal camp supplies whenever they can. The 
large meat wagons which carry supplies to the distant hotels and 
camps overnight are equipped with iron covers, because the bears 



OUE NATIOISTAL PAEKS. 



15 




Photograph by (J. Swnnsoii 

Black Tail Deek, Yellowstone National Pakk 

used to rip off the AYocden tops during the resting- times and run olf 
with sides of beef and mutton. One night several years ago teamsters 
drove three bears from tlie top of a single one of these big wagons. 

This wild animal paradise contains thirty thousand elk, several 
thousand moose, innumerable deer, many antelupe, and a large and 
increasing herd of wild bison. 

It is an excellent bird preserve also ; more than a hundred and fifty 
species live natural, undisturbed lives. Eagles abound among the 
crags. Wild geese and ducks are found in profusion. INIany thou- 
sands of large white pelicans add to the picturesqueness of Yellow- 
stone Lake, 

The Yellowstone also contains a petrified forest of prehistoric trees, 
the partial trunks of some of which remain standing. 

DISCOVERY OF THE YELLOWSTONE 

The first recorded visit to the Yellowstone was made by John 
Colter in 1810. He was returning home alone from the Lewis and 
Clark expedition and took refuge there from hostile Indians. His 
story of its wonders was discredited. 

The next recorded visit was by a trapper named Joseph Meek in 
1829, who described it as " a country smoking with vapor from boiling 
springs and burning with gases issuing from small craters." From 
some of these craters, he said, " issued blue flame and molten brim- 
stone," which, of course, was not true, though doubtless Meek fidly 
believed it to be the truth. 

Between 1830 and 1810 ^Varren Angus Ferris, a clerk in the 
American Fur Co., wrote the first description of the Firehole Geyser 
Basin, but it was not until 1852 that the geyser district was actually 



16 OUE XATIOXAL PARKS. 

defined and the c'eysors precisely located. This was dt)iie by Father 
De Smet, the famous Jesuit missionary. 

It remained for a (lovernment expedition, sent out in 1859 under 
command of Capt. AV. F. Reynolds, to first really explore and chart 
the ivirion. Several private explorers followed, but so gTeat was 
public incredulity as to the marvels they described that they did not 
dare tell their exjx'riences before any genei'al audiences, for several 
lecturers had been stoned in the streets as impostors. The large 
exploring expedition luider Henry D. Washburn, surveyor general 
of Montana, in 1870, finalh" established the facts to the public belief 
and led to the creation of the Yellowstone National Park. 

Ill 

THE YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK 

Special Characteristics: Sensationally Beautiful Valley and Spectacular 

Waterfalls 

THE Yosemite National Park lies near the crest of the Sierra 
Nevada in middle eastern California. Its 1,100 square miles 
contain scenic features of beanty so unusual and variety so wide 
that ade(juate description reads like romance. 

The famous Yosemite Valley is a small part of this extraordinary 
holiday garden — a mere crack in its granite mountains seven miles 
long by less than a mile wide. 

For the rest, the park includes, in John Muir's words, "the head- 
waters of the Tuolumne and Pierced Eivers, two of the most songfid 
streams in the world; innumerable lakes and waterfalls and smooth 
silky lawns; the noblest forests, the loftiest granite domes, the deepest 
ice-sculi-)tured canyons, the brightest crystalline pavements, and 
snowy mountains soaring into the sky twelve and thirteen thousand 
feet, arrayed in open ranks and spiry pinnacled groups partially 
separated by tremendous canyons and ami^hitheaters; gardens on 
their sunny brows, avalanches thundering down their long white 
slopes, cataracts roaring gray and foaming in the crooked rugged 
gorges, and glaciers in their shadowy recesses working in silence, 
slowly completing their sculptures ; new-born lakes at their feet, blue 
and green, free or encumbered with drifting icebergs like miniature 
Arctic Oceans, shining, sparkling, calm as stars." 

This land of enchantments is a land of enchanted climate. Its 
summers are warm, but not too warm: dry, but not too dry; its 
nights cold and marvelousl}^ starry. 

The world-famous Yosemite Valley was discovered in 18r)l l)y 
mounted volunteers pursuing Indians into their fastnesses. Because 



OUR NATIONAL PARKS. 



17 








Bird's-eye View of Yosemite Valley I^ooking Eastwakd to the Crest of the 

Sierra Nevada 

1. Clouds Rest; 2, Half Dome; 3, Mount Watkins ; 4, Basket Dome; 5, North 
Dome ; 6, Washington Column ; 7, Royal Arches ; 8, Mirror Lake and mouth 
of Tenaya Canyon ; 9, Yosemite Village ; 10, Head of Yosemite Falls ; 11, 
Eagle Peak (the Three Brothers) ; 12, El Capitau : 13, Ribbon Fall ; 14, Merced 
River; 15, El Capitan Bridge and Moraine; 16, Big Oak Flat Road; 17, 
Wawona Road ; 18, Bridalveil Fall ; 19, Cathedral Rocks ; 20, Cathedral 
Spires ; 21. Sentinel Rock ; 22, Glacier Point ; 23, Sentinel Dome ; 24. Liberty 
Cap ; 25, IMount Broderick ; 26, Little Y^'osemite Valley. 

of its extraoidinary character and quite exceptional beanty it quickly 
became celebrated; but it was not until 1874 that a road was built 
into it. Until then it was approached only by trail. 

THE VALLEY AND ITS WATERFALLS 

No matter what their expectation, most visitors are delightfully 
astonished upon entering the Yosemite Valley. The sheer immensity 
32164°— 16 3 



18 



OUR NATIONAL PARKS. 



of the precipices on either side of the valley's peaceful floor; the 
loftiness and the romantic suggestion of the numerous water walls ; the 
majesty of the granite walls; and the unreal, almost fairy quality of 
the ever-yarying whole, can not be successfully foretold. 

This yalley Avas once a tortuous riyer canyon. So rapidly was it 
cut by the Merced that the tributary yallej^s soon remained hanging 
high on either side. Then the canyon became the bed of a great 
glacier. It was widened as well as deepened, and as a consequence 

the hanging character of the 



'*?!<:? 



side y alleys Avas accentuated. 
There were hundreds, thou- 
sands, of other ice-filled can- 
yons in the Sierra ; but in 
none did the glaciers accom- 
plish as much as they did in 
the Yosemite Valley. Why? 
Because there the Sierra gran- 
ites, as a rule solid and excep- 
tionally resistant, Avere tra- 
versed by thousands of fis- 
sures and therefore readily 
scooped out. 

The manner of its making 
explains the extreme loftiness 
of the Avater falls Avhicli pour 
over the rim into the A'alley. 
The Yosemite Falls, for in- 
stance, drops 1,430 feet in one 
sheer fall, a height equal to 
nine Niagara Falls piled one 
on top of the other. The 
LoAver Yosemite Fall, imme- 
diately beloAv, has a drop of 
3-20 feet, or tAvo Niagaras more. Vernal Falls has the same height, 
while Illilouette Falls is 50 feet higher. The Nevada Falls drops 501 
feet sheer; the celebrated Bridal Veil Fall 620 feet, Avhile the Kibbon 
Falls, highest of all, drops 1.G12 feet sheer, a straight fall ten times 
as great as Niagara. NoAvhere else in the Avorld may be had a Avater 
spectacle such as this. 

Similarly the sheer summits. Cathedral Rocks rise 2,500 feet per- 
pendicular from the valley; El Capitan, 3.001 feet; Sentinel Dome, 
1,157 feet ; Half Dome, 1.802 feet ; Cloud's Rest. 5,001 feet. 
Among these monsters the ]\Ierced sings its Avinding way. 
The falls are at their best in May and June while the winter snows 
are melting. They are still fine in July, but after that decrease 
rapidly in volume. 




riiotograph by Liiulley Eddy 

CojiMox Black ok Bkowx Bear 



OUR XATIOXAL PAEKS. 



19 



The Yosemite Valley, extraordinary though it is from both the 
scenic and the scientific points of view, is an exceedingly small part 
of the Yosemite Xational Park; but until the summer of 1915, when 
the Department of the Interior acipiired possession of the old Tioga 
IJoad, the magnificent country north of the valley was known only 
to a few enthusiastic mountaineers who went in yeaVly with camp 
outfits. The old Tioga Road was built in 1881 to a mine soon after 
abandoned. Its recent repair by the Government has opened to all 
one of the finest scenic sections in America, a country dotted with 
splendid snowy summits, grown with glorious forests, and watered 
with rushing trout streams. 

THE WATER WHEELS 

And thus is added to the amazing water spectacle for wdiich the 
valley is famous still another kind of Yosemite waterfall destined 
to world-wide celebrity. The Tuolumne River, descending sharply 
to the head of the Hetch Hetchy Valley, becomes, in John Muir's 
phrase, "one wild, exulting, onrushing mass of snowy purple bloom 
spreading over glacial waves of granite without any definite channel, 
gliding in magnificent silver plumes, dashing and foaming through 
huge bowlder dams, leaping high in the air in wheel-like whirls, dis- 
playing glorious enthusiasm, tossing from side to side, doubling, 
glinting, singing in exuberance of mountain energy." The crowning 
feature of this mad spectacle are the water wheels which rise 50 feet 
or more into the air when the slantinc; river strikes obstructions. 




Photograph by W. L. Huber 

Wateewheels in the Tuolumne River, Yosemite National Pakk 
The sloping current, striking projecting roclcs, rises fifty feet or more in tlie air 



20 



OUR NATIONAL PARKS. 



In iuUlition to its many other attractions, tlie Yosemite National 
Park contains three groves of sequois, the celebrated "Big Trees of 
California.'' One of these trees, the Grizzly Giant, has a diameter of 
29.G feet and a height of 204 feet. 



IV 



A 



THE SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK 

Special Characteristic: Largest and Oldest Trees in the "World 

XD they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower whose top 
may reach unto heaven. 
Thus is recorded, in the eleventh chapter of Genesis, the building 
of the Tower of Babel. While this tower was doubtless still standing, 
and a hundred years or two before the birth of Abraham, a tiny seed 
in the warm soil of a mountain slope on quite the opposite side of the 
world thrust into the light of day a slender green spike Avhich was 
destined, during an existence of more than four thousand years, to 
become itself a lofty tower; noble in form, "with a physiognomy 
almost Godlike," as John Muir puts it, pulsating with life to its top- 




I'liotojil-aiih \,y .T. !■:. Kolicrts 

PicMc I'AKTY Among tmk Bk; Tueks o^■^ Skquoia National Pakk 



OUR NATIONAL PARKS. 21 

most leaflet more than three hundred feet above the groitnd, and 
oiving forth a bal)el of bird song to the accompaniment which the 
summer ^Yinds played upon its many millions of tiny leaves. 

On the stump of this prostrate sequoia tree, one of the noblest of 
the celebrated Big- Trees of California, John Muir counted more than 
four thousand rings, a ring for every year of its life. Its trunk, 
exclusive of bark, Avas thirtj'-five feet eight inches in diameter. As 
the bark of the very largest sequoias is two feet or more in thickness, 
this giant must have measured forty feet in diameter when it was 
still growing on one of the slopes of the Kings River. 

LARGEST OF THE MONSTERS 

In the Sequoia National Park, upon the upper slopes of the Sierra 
Nevada in central California, and in the little General Grant 
National Park, six miles away and under the same management, 
grows 1.1GC),000 sequoia trees, of which 12,000 are more than ten feet 
in diameter. Some of the others have these dimensions: 

General Sherman Tree: Diameter, 36.5 feet; height, -279.9 feet. 

General Grant Tree : Diameter, 35 feet ; height, 261 feet. 

Abraham Lincoln Tree : Diameter, 31 feet ; height, 270 feet. 

California Tree : Diameter, 30 feet ; height, 260 feet. 

George Washington Tree: Diameter, 29 feet; height, 255 feet. 

William ISIcKinley Tree : Diameter, 28 feet ; height, 291 feet. 

Dalton Tree : Diameter, 27 feet ; height, 292 feet. 
There are sequoia trees of great size in several other parts of Cali- 
fornia also, notably in the Yosemite National Park, where three dis- 
tinct groves are found ; but by far the greatest number, and the indi- 
vidual trees of greatest size, are in the Sequoia National Park and its 
little neighbor. 

HOW TO VISUALIZE A BIG TREE 

It is extremely difficult to realize what the dimensions of these 
trees really mean. 

To visualize as best you can the greatest of those now standing, the 
General Sherman Tree, measure off and stake its diameter, 36 feet 6 
inches, upon the ground in front of a church the height of whose 
steeple you can readily ascertain. Then stand back a distance equal 
to the height of the tree, 280 feet, and look hard at the stakes whose 
distance apart represents the thickness of the trunk. 

Now raise your eyes slowl3^ imagining this trunk rising in front 
of the church, tapering very slightly as it rises. When you are look- 
ing upward at an angle of forty-five degrees from the spot where you 
are standing (and this Avill not be difficult to calculate) you will be 
looking at the point where the top of the General Sherman Tree 



22 OUR NATIONAL PARKS. 

would be if it were growino; in front of your church instead of in the 
Sequoia National Park. The known height of the steeple will help 
you verify this calculation. 

It will help your comprehension of the great size of these trees to 
know that a box big enough to have easily held the ill-fated ship 
Lusitania, one of the largest ever built, could be made from inch 
boards sawed from any one of these great sequoias, with boards 
enough left over to build a dozen houses. Automobiles and six-horse 
teams have been driven up and down, the fallen trunks of several 
great sequoias, and there are regular wagon roads running through 
gaps in the trunks of several others in our national parks. Two 
parallel street car lines and a driveway might be run through the 
trunks of several of the very largest. 

THE OLDEST LIVING THING 

But the age of the sequoia is still more difficult to realize. It is 
beyond compare the oldest lining thing. 

Several of the trees now growing in hearty maturity in the Sequoia 
National Park were vigorous youngsters before the pyramids were 
built on the Egyptian desert before Babylon reached its prime. 
Hundreds of them were thriving before the heroic ages of ancient 
Greece — while, in fact, the rough Indo-Germanic ancestors of the 
Greeks were still swarming from the north. Thousands were lusty 
youths through all the ages of Greek art and Roman wars. Tens of 
thousands were flourishing trees when Christ was born in Bethlehem. 

But with all its vast age the sequoia to-day is the embodiment of 
serene vigor. No description, says Muir, can give any adequate idea 
of its majesty, much less its beauty. He calls it nature's forest mas- 
terpiece. He dwells upon its patrician bearing, its suggestion of 
ancient stock, its strange air of other days, its thoroughbred look 
inherited from the long ago. " Poised in the fullness of strength and 
beauty, stern and solemn in mien, it glows with eager enthusiastic 
life to the tip of every leaf and branch and far-reaching root, calm 
as a granite dome, the first to feel the touch of the rosy beams of 
morning, the last to bid the sun good night." 

The sequoia is regular and symmetrical in general form. Its power- 
ful, stately trunk is purplish to cinnamon brown and rises without a 
branch a hundred or a hundred and fifty feet — which is as high or 
higher than the tops of most forest trees. Its bulky limbs shoot 
boldly out on every side. Its foliage, the most feathery and delicate 
of all the conifers, is densely massed. The bright green cones are 
about two and a half inches long, generating seeds scarcely more than 
an eight of an inch across. The wood is almost indestructible except 
by fire. Fallen trunks and broken branches lie for centuries unde- 
cayed and almost unaltered. 



OUR NATIONAL PARKS. 23 

The sequoias are the glory, as they were the cause, of the Sequoia 
National Park. Scattered here and there OA'er great areas, they 
cluster chiefly in thirteen separate groves, and it is in these groves 
that they attain their greatest size and luxuriance. 

But they are by no means the only attractions of this national park, 
Avliich many frequenters declare nature has equipped best of all for 
the joys and pleasures of mountain living. 

IDEAL FOR CAMPING OUT 

It is the ideal place to camp out. It is a country of magnificent 
mountain scenery, easily accessible when once you are in it. Its 
peaks are among the loftiest, its canyons among the deepest and most 
romantic. Its summer temperatures are even and bracing. Its sum- 
mers are practically without rain. 

Across its borders north and east opens up a mountain region, on 
the crest of the Sierra, of unexcelled grandeur. Mount AVhitney, the 
highest mountain in the United States, 14,501 feet, lies beyond its 
eastern boundary. The Kings and the Kern Rivers have few scenic 
equals. These and its many other rushing streams abound in trout. 

Y 

THE MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK 

Special Characteristic: Complicated Glacial System Flowing from One Peak 

IX the northwestern corner of the United States rises, from the 
Cascade Mountains, a series of extinct volcanoes ice-clad from 
summit to foot the year around. Foremost among them, counting 
from south to north, are INIount Shasta in California ; INIount Hood in 
Oregon; Mount St. Helens, Mount Adams, ]\Iount Rainier, and Mount 
Baker in Washington. Once, in the dim ages when America w^as 
making, they blazed across the sea like huge beacons. To-day, their 
fires quenched, they suggest a stalwart band of Knights of the Ages, 
helmeted in snow, armored in ice, standing at parade upon a carpet 
patterned gorgeously in wild flowers. 

Easily chief of this knightly band is Mount Rainier, a giant tower- 
ing 14,408 feet above tidewater in Puget Sound. Home-bound 
sailors far at sea mend their courses from his silver summit. 
Travelers over land catch the sun glint from his shining sides at a 
distance of more than one hundred and fifty miles. 

This mountain has a glacier system far exceeding in size and im- 
pressive beauty that of any other in the United States. From its 
summit and sirques twenty-eight named rivers of ice pour slowly 
down its sides. There are others unnamed. Seen upon the map, as 



24 OUR NATIONAL PAEKS. » 

if from an aeroplane, one thinks of it as an enormous frozen octo- 
pus stretcliiuii' icy tentacles down upon every side amono" the rich 
gardens of wild flowers and splendid forests of fir and cedars below. 

BIRTH OF THE GLACIERS 

EA-erv winter the moisture-laden winds from the Pacific, suddenly 
cooled against its summit, deposit upon its top and sides enormous 
snows. These, settling in the mile-wide crater which was left after 
a great explosion in some prehistoric age carried away perhaps two 
thousand feet of the volcano's former height, press with over- 
whelming weight down tlie mountain's sloping sides. 

Thus are born the glaciers, for the snow imder its own pressure 
quickly hardens into ice. Through twenty-eight valleys, self-carved 
in the solid rock, flow these rivers of ice, now turning, as rivers of 
water turn, to avoid the harder rock strata, now roaring over preci- 
pices like congealed waterfalls, now rippling, like water currents, 
over rough bottoms, pushing, pouring relentlessly on until they reach 
those parts of their courses where warmer air turns them into rivers 
of water. 

There are forty-eight square miles of these glaciers, ranging in 
width from five hundred feet to a full mile and in thickness from 
fifty feet to many hundreds, perhaps even more than a thousand feet. 

ONCE WAS 2,000 FEET HIGHER 

Mount Eainier is nearly three miles high, measured from sea level. 
It rises nearly two miles above its immediate base. Once it was a 
complete cone like the famous Fujiyama, the sacred mountain of 
Japan. Then it was probably 10,000 feet high. 

Indian legends tell of the great eruption which blew its top off. 

The National Park, which incloses Mount Rainier, is about eighteen 
miles square, containing three hundred and twenty-four square miles. 
It is easily reached by railroad and automobile from neighboring 
cities. A new automobile road enables stages to bring visitors to 
beautiful Paradise Valley, whose flowered slopes are bordered by 
the great Nisqually, Paradise, and Stevens Glaciers. One may reach 
this point in four hours from Tacoma and return the same day. 
But it is a spot where the visitor may well spend weeks. 

The Nisqually Glacier is the best known though by no means 
the largest of the glaciers. It is five miles long and at Paradise 
Valley is half a mile wide. Glistening white and fairly smooth at 
its shining source on the mountain's summit, its surface here is soiled 
with dust and broken stone and squeezed and rent by terrible pres- 
sure into fantastic shapes. Innumerable crevasses or cracks many 
feet deep break across it, caused by the more rapid movement of the 



OUE NATIONAL PARKS. 



25 




I'botogi-apli by Curtis & Millei-, Seattle 

The Kautz Glaciek, Mount Rainier National Park 
Showing its winding course from its Cirque near the Summit 

glacier's middle than its edges; for glaciers, again like rivers of 
water, develop swifter currents nearer mid-stream. 

Professor Le Conte tells us that the movement of Nisqually Glacier 
in summer averages, at mid-stream, about sixteen inches a da}^ It 
is far less at the margins, its speed being retarded by the friction 
of the sides. 

It is one of the great pleasures of a visit to Mount Rainier National 
Park to wander over the fields of snow and climb out on the Nisqually 
Glacier and explore its crevasses and ice caves. 



26 



OUR NATIONAL TARKS. 




1' holograph by Curl is ^ Milk'i, Seaitk- 

Mount Rainier, Showing Beginning of Nisquatxy Glaciek 
View from wilil-flower-carpeted Paradise Valley 

Like all glaciers, the Xisqually gathers on its surface masses of 
rock with which it strews its sides just as rivers of water strew their 
banks with logs and floating debris. These are called lateral moraines, 
or side moraines. Somotime> glaciers build lateral moraines miles 
long and over a thousand feet high, as you will see when you visit 
the Eocky Mountain National Park. 

The rocks which are carried in midstream to the end of the glacier 
and dropped when the ice melts are called the medial or middle 
moraine. 

The end, or snout, of the glacier thus always lies among a great 
mass of rocks and stones. The Xisqually River flows from a cave in 
the end of the Xisqually Glacier's snout, for the melting begins miles 
upstream under the glacier. The river is milky white when it first 
appears because it carries sediment and powdered rock, which, how- 
ever, it deposits in time, becoming quite clear. 

There are many glaciers as large and larger than the Xisqually, 
but they are little known because so hard to reach. The Department 



OUR NATIONAL PAEKS. 27 

of the Interior has now completed trails around the great ice moun- 
tain and all of these glaciers are now accessible. 

CREATURES LIVING IN THE ICE 

Many interesting things might be told of these glaciers were there 
space. For example, several species of minute insects live in the 
ice, hopping about like tiny fleas. They are harder to see than the 
so-called sand fleas at the seashore because much smaller. Slender, 
dark-brown worms live in countless millions in the surface ice. 
Microscopic rose-colored plants also thrive in such great numbers 
that they tint the surface here and there, making Avhat is commonly 
called " red snow." 

GORGEOUS CARPETING OF FLOWERS 

But this brief picture of the Mount Eainier National Park would 
miss its loveliest touch without some notice of the wild-flower parks 
lying at the base, and often reaching far up between the icy fingers 
of Mount Rainier. Paradise Valley, Henrys Hunting Ground, Spray 
Park, Summerland — such are the names given to some of these 
beauty spots. 

Let John Muir, the celebrated naturalist, describe them here. 

"Above the forests," he writes, "there is a zone of the loveliest 
flowers, fifty miles in circuit and nearly two miles Avicle, so closely 
planted and luxurious that it seems as if nature, glad to make an 
open space between woods so dense and ice so deep, were econo- 
mizing the precious ground and trjdng to see how many of her 
darlings she can get together in one mountain wreath — daisies, 
anemones, columbine, erythroniums, larkspurs, etc., among which we 
wade knee-deep and waist-deep, the bright corollas in myriads touch- 
ing petal to petal. Altogether this is the richest subalpine garden 
I have ever found, a perfect flower elysium." 

VI 
THE CRATER LAKE NATIONAL PARK 

Special Characteristic: Lake of Gi-eat Depth Filling Collapsed Volcanic 

Crater 

IN the heart of the Cascade Mountains of our Northwest, whose 
volcanoes were in constant eruption in the ages before history, 
and now, extinct and ice-plated, shine like huge diamonds in the 
sunlight, there lies, jewel-like in a setting of lava, a lake of unbe- 
lievable blue. The visitor who comes suddenly upon it stands silent 
with emotion, overcome by its quite extraordinary beauty and by a 



28 



OUR NATIOXAL PARKS. 



strange sense of mystery >vliich e\en the unimaginative feel keenly 
and which increases rather than decreases Avitli familiarity. 

This is Ci-ater Lake. 

One of the very largest of these ancient volcanoes was ISIoiint 
Mazama. It stood in the sonther-n central part of what is now Oregon, 
two hundred miles south of INIount Rainier and nearly as lofty. It 
was about the height of Mount Shasta, in plain sight of which it 
rose nearly a hundred miles to its north. 




I'hotograpli l)y II. T. Cowling 

Across Ckatek Lake, Showing Wizard Island 
The hi.iih point on the opposite rim of Llao Rock 

But this was ages ago. Xo human eyes ever saw Mount Mazama. 
Long before man came, the entire upper part of it in some titanic 
cataclysm fell in upon itself as if swallowed by a subterranean cavern, 
leaving its craterlike lava sides cut sharply downwardly into the 
central abyss. 

What a spectacle that must have been ! 

The first awful depth of this vast hole no man can guess. But the 
volcano was not quenched; it burst up through the collapsed lavas 
in three places, making lesser cones within the greater, but none quite 
so high as the surrounding rim. 

Then the fires ceased and gradually, as the years passed, springs 
percolated into the vast basin and filled it with water within a thou- 
sand feet of its rim. As you see it to-day one of these cones emerges 
a few hundred feet from the surface. The lake is 2.000 feet deep in 
places. It has no inlet of any sort nor is there any stream running 



OUR NATIONAL PARKS. 29 

out of it ; but the water is supposed to escape by underground chan- 
nels and to reappear in the Khnnath River, a few miles away. 

Geologists find Crater Lake of special interest because of the way 
nature made it. Many volcanoes have had their tops blown off. 
Mount Eainier was one of these. But no other in the United States 
has fallen into itself, like Mount Mazama. 

The evidence of this process is quite conclusive. The lava found 
on the slopes that remain was not blown there from an exploding 
summit but ran, hot and fluid, from a crater many thousands of feet 
higher. The pitch of these outer slopes enables the scientist to tell 
with reasonable probability how high the volcano originally was. 

ROMANTIC INDIAN LEGENDS 

The Indians believed that Crater Lake was the home of a great 
spirit whom they called Llao. The blue waters teemed with giant 
crawfish, his servants, some of them so large that they could reach 
great claws to the top of the cliffs and seize venturesome visitors. 
Another great spirit chieftain, whom they called Skell, was supposed 
to live in the Klamath Marsh near by and to have many servants 
who could take at will the forms of eagles and antelopes. 

War broke out, so the Indian legend says, between Llao and Skell 
and Skell was captured. The monsters from the lake tore out his 
heart and played ball with it, tossing it back and forth from mountain 
top to mountain top. But it was caught in the air by one of Skell's 
eagles and by him passed to one of SkelFs antelopes, and b}^ him 
passed to others who finally escape with it. 

Skell's body miraculously grew again around his heart and, in 
time, he captured Llao and tore his body into fragments, which he 
tossed into the lake. The giant crawfish, thinking them fragments 
of Skell's body, devoured them greedily. But when, last of all, Llao's 
head was thrown in, the monsters recognized it and would not eat it. 

The remains of Llao's head i-emain to-day sticking out of the water 
of Crater Lake. Some Indians still look upon it with awe, but 
scientists recognize it as the little cone described above. Its name is 
Wizard Island. 

Another legend describes the strength-giving power of the water. 
A band of Klamath Indians came unexpectedly upon the rim and 
ran away in terror. But one, braver than the others, remained to 
gaze upon its beauty. Lie lit a camp fire and slept. 

Again and again he returned. One day he ventured to the water's 
edge. After many moons he dared even tO' bathe in the lake, and 
Avas filled with great strength. He told his tribe, and, after many 
moons, others came and bathed and were strengthened. Then all 
the tribe bathed in the waters and became wonderfully strong. 



30 OUR NATIONAL PARKS, 

But finally Lino had his revenge. His monsters seized the brave 
who first ventured, bore him to the highest part of the rim, and tore 
his body into small pieces. The spot Avhere this Avas done is to-day 
called Llao Ixock. 

PHANTOM SHIP AND WIZARD ISLAND 

Crater Lake is one of the most beautiful spots in America. The 
gray lava rim is remarkably sculptured. 'Hie water is remarkably 
blue, a lovely turquoise along the edges, and, in the deep parts, seen 
from above, extremel}^ dark. The contrast on a sunny day between 
the unreal, fairylike rim across the lake and the fantastic sculptures 
at one's feet, and, in the lake between, the myriad gradations from 
faintest turquoise to deepest Prussian blue, dwells long in the memory. 

Unforgettable, also, are the twisted and contorted lava formations 
of the inner rim. A boat ride along the edge of the lake reveals 
these in a thousand changes. At one point near shore a mass of 
curiously carved lava is called the Phantom Ship because, seen 
at a distance, it suggests a ship under full sail. The illusion at dusk 
or by moonlight is striking. In certain slants of light the Phantom 
Ship suddenly disappears — a phantom, indeed. 

Another experience full of interest is a visit to Wizard Island. One 
can climb its sides and descend into its little crater. 

YII 
THE MESA VERDE NATIONAL PARK 

Special Characteristic: Prehistoric Cliff Dwellings 

HEEE did the Indians come from ? That is one of the innu- 



w 



merable questions which anthropologists have not yet solved. 
Some suggest that they came from Asia by way of Alaska because 
the Eskimo seem to somewhat resemble Mongolians. Othei-s think 
they came from Europe by wa}^ of Greenland; others that they 
came from the South Sea islands by way of South America. 

Perhaps all these theorists are right. In one thing onl}^ do they 
agree and that is that, from the Arctic to the Antarctic, no matter 
what their tribal or other differences due to varying conditions of 
climate and surroundings, all American Indians are of one physical 
type with similar mental characteristics and cultural tendencies. 

Their highest civilization undoubtedly developed in Peru, Central 
America, and southern Mexico, where architectural ruins of quite 
astonishing beauty are to-day crumbling under the jungle. This 
civilization was ruthlessly destroyed by the Spanish conquest follow- 
ing the discovery of America. 

The next highest prehistoric civilization was in our own Southwest, 
and the remains of its highest special development are the cliff 



OUR NATIONAL PARKS. 



31 




Si'KUCE TuKK lIoL'.sh, ]Me,sa Vekue Xatio.xai. I'akk 
Showing how the dwellings are protected under overhanging cliffs 

dwellings of the Mesa Verde in southwestern Colorado, to preserve 
which Congress has set apart the Mesa Verde National Park. 

When one speaks of the Pueblo Indians he does not mean an Indian 
stock or tribe, but merely Indians, possibly of various stocks and 
many tribes, who used to live, and a few of whose modern descendants 
still live, in pueblos or community houses of many rooms holding 
entire tribes or villages under one roof. The builders of Mesa Verde's 
prehistoric dwellings were of the Pueblo type. 



BURROWING INTO THE MESAS 

Those who have traveled through our Southwestern States have 
seen from the car window innumerable mesas or small isolated pla- 
teaus rising abruptly for hundreds of feet from the bare and often 
arid plains. The word mesa is Spanish for table, and indeed mam' 
of these mesas when seen at a distance may suggest to the imaginative 
mind tables with cloths reaching to the floor. 

Once the leA^el of these mesa tops was the level of all of this vast 
southwestern countr}^, but the rains and floods of centuries have 
washed away all the softer earth down to its present level, leaving 
standing only the rocky spots or those so covered with surface rocks 
that the rains could not reach the softer gravel underneath. 

All have heard of the Enchanted Mesa in Xew ISIexico which the 
Indians of recent times considered sacred. The Mesa Verde, or green 
mesa (because it is covered with stunted cedar and pinyon trees in a 
land where trees are few) is the next most widel}^ known. 



32 OUR NATIONAL PARKS. 

The Mesa Verde is one of the hirgest mesas. It is fifteen miles 
long and eight miles Avide. At its foot are masses of broken rocks 
rising from 300 to 500 feet above the bare plains. These are called 
the talus. Above the talus yellow sandstone walls rise precipitously 
two or three hundred feet higher to the mesa's top. 

It stands on the right bank of the Mancos River, down to which 
a number of small, rough canyons, once beds of streams, slope from 
the top of the mesa. It is in the sides of these small canyons where 
the most Avonderful and best preserved cliif dwellings in America, if 
not in the world, are found to-day. 

LIVING HARD IN PREHISTORIC TIMES 

In prehistoric times a large human population lived in these cliff 
dwellings, seeking a home there for protection. They obtained their 
livelihood by agriculture on the forbidding tops of the mesa, culti- 
vating scanty farms which yielded them small crops of corn. 

Life must have been hard in this dry country, when the Mesa 
Verde communities flourished in the side of these sandstone cliffs. 
Game was scarce and hunting arduous. The Mancos yielded a few 
fishes. The earth contributed berries or nuts. At that time, as at 
present, water was rare and found only in sequestered places near 
the heads of the canyons, but notwithstanding these difhculties the 
inhabitants cultivated their farms and raised their corn, which they 
ground on flat stones called metates, and baked their bread on a flat 
stone griddle. They boiled their meat in well-made vessels, some of 
which were artistically decorated. 

Their life was hard, but so confidently did they believe that they 
were dependent upon the gods to make the rain fall and the corn 
grow that they were a religious people who worshipped the sun as 
the father of all, and the earth as the mother Avho brought them all 
their material blessings. They possessed no written language, and 
could only record their thoughts by a few symbols which they painted 
on their earthenware jars or scratched on the sides of the cliffs adjoin- 
ing their habitations. 

As their sense of beauty was keen, their art, though primitive, was 
true; rarely realistic, generally symbolic. Their decoration of cotton 
fabrics and ceramic work might be called beautiful, even when judged 
by the highly developed taste of to-day. They fashioned axes, spear 
points, and rude tools of stone ; they wove brightly-patterned sandals 
and made attractive basketry. 

They were not content with rude buildings, and had long outgrown 
caves or earth homes that satisfied less civilized Indians farther north 
and south of them. They shaped stones into regular forms, orna- 
mented them with designs and laid them one on another. Their 
masonry resisted the destructive forces of centuries of rain and snow 
beating upon them. 



OUR XATIOXAL PARKS. 33 

The Mesa Verde tribes probably had little culture when they first 
climbed these precipitous rocks and found shelter, like animals, in 
the natural caves under the overhanging floor of the mesa. These 
caves were shelters not only from the storm of winter and the burn- 
ing sun of summer, but from rapacious human enemies as well; for 
there are evidences of determined warfare among the prehistoric 
tribes of our southwest lands. 

But with the generations, perhaps the centuries, they made rapid 
strides. Ladders were substituted for zigzag trails, making their 
retreats more inaccessible, adobe supplemented caves, brick and stone 
succeeded adobe, culture succeeded savagery. 

DISCOVERY OF SUN TEMPLE 

A great mound on the top of the mesa which Dr. Fewkes unearthed 
in the summer of 1015 shows that, probably about i;^>00 A. D., they 
had begun to emerge from the caves to build upon the surface, still a 
further advance in civilization. It is significant that this building is 
partially sculptured and architecturally ambitious. It is still more 
significant that it was not a house for temporal needs nor a fortress, 
but religious structure. It was a temple to their god, the sun. 

The remains of this advanced civilization, of quality so greatly 
beyond its neighbors, may be seen and studied by all who choose to 
visit the Mesa Verde National Park. It is an experience full of 
interest and pleasure. There are many canyons, and many ruins in 
each canyon. There are ruins yet unexplored. There are several 
mounds, like that under which Sun Temple was discovered, yet un- 
earthed. The visitor may enter these ruins and examine many of 
the articles which were found in them. 

EXPLORATION OF THE MESA VERDE 

Two herdsmen. Richard and Alfred Wethcrill, while hunting lost 
cattle one December day in 1888, discovered these ruins. Coming 
to the edge of a small camion, they saw under the overreaching cliffs 
of the opposite side, apparently hanging above a great precipice, what 
they thought was a city with towers and walls. They were aston- 
ished beyond measure — and indeed even the expectant visitor of 
to-day involuntarily exclaims over the beauty of the spectacle. 

Later they explored it and called it Cliff Palace — an unfortunate 
name, for it Avas not a palace at all, but a village with two hundred 
rooms for family living and with twenty-tAvo kivas, or sacred rooms, 
for Avorship. Later on they found another similar coiimnmity dAvell- 
ing Avliich once sheltered three hundred and fifty inhabitants. This 
they called Spruce Tree House because a large spruce tree grcAv 
near it. These names have remained. 



34 OUR NATIOXAL PARKS. 

Other explorers followed and iiiaiiy other ruins were found. This 
is not the place to name or describe them, but it may be said that 
here may be seen the oldest and most fully realized civic-center scheme 
in America. City planning of wdiich we hear so much now, as if it 
were a new idea, began in America five or six centuries ago under the 
cliifs of the Mesa Verde. 

Antiquities are not the only attractiojis in the Mesa Verde National 
Park. Its natural beauties should not be overlooked. In winter it 
is wholly inaccessible on account of the deep snows: in some months 
it is dry and parched, but in June and July when rains come vegeta- 
tation is in full bloom, the plants flower and the grass grows high in 
the glades; the trees put forth their new green leaves. The Mesa 
Verde is attractive in all seasons of the year and full of interest for 
those who love the unusual and picturesque of mountain scenery. 

VIII 

THE GLACIER NATIONAL PARK 

Special Characteristics: Unsurpassed Alpine Scenery; 250 Lakes of 
Particular Beauty 

THE Glacier National Park is so named because in the hollow of 
its rugged mountain tops lie more than sixty glaciers. It is in 
northwestern Montana right up against the Canadian boundary line, 
from which, on the map, it appears to hang down like a boy's pocket 
full of the sort of things boys usually carry there. It is a land of 
peaks and precipices, snow, ice, rushing rivers, waterfalls, and lakes 
of great loveliness. Experienced travelers tell us that nowhere in 
the world is alpine beauty found in such diversity and luxuriance. 
It contains 1,-"J34 square miles. 

A glacier is a river of ice, remarkably like a river of water in its 
action, only, of course, much slower. The glacier begins in a pocket 
or cir(|ue of snow instead of in a lake or spring, as does a river. 

Like the river, it flows through valleys, the ice becoming harder 
under the pressure from above. It grows in size by smaller glaciers 
floAving into it. It breaks into ripples of ice while flowing over rocky 
ledges, and, also like rivers, forms falls when dropping over precipices. 

The glacier ends when it reaches far enough down the mountain 
sides for the warmer weather to melt the ice into a river of water. 

But, Avith all its glaciers, the Glacier National Park is chiefly re- 
markable for its picturesquely modeled peaks, the unique quality 
of its rugged mountain masses, its gigantic precipices, and the 
romantic loveliness of its lakes. Though all the other National 
I*ai'ks have these general features in addition to others which dif- 
ferentiate each from the other, the Glacier National Park possesses 



OUR NATIONAL PARKS. 



35 



them in uiuisnnl abundance and especially happy combination. In 
fact, the almost sensational massing of these scenic features is what 
gives it marked individuality. 

A ROMANCE OF GEOLOGY 

How Nature made this remarkable spot far back in the dim ages 
long before man is a stirring story. 

Once this whole region was covered with water, but whether the 
water was a lake or a part of the sea no man knows. The tiny earthy 
jiarticles carried in this water, just as you see mud carried in a stream 
after a shower, deposited themselves gradually in layers on the bot- 
tom, continually lessening the water's depth. Geologists call these 
la^'ers strata after they harden into rock. 

If you Avere in the Glacier National Park to-day you would see 
broad horizontal streaks of differently colored rock in the mountain 
masses thousands of feet above your head. These are the very strata 
that the waters deposited in its depths in those far-away ages. 

But how did they get away np there in the air? The answer to 
that is the wonderful storv. 




I'hotograph by H. T. Cowling 

Chaeacteristic Foixted IMorNTAix IN Glaciek National Park 
Slouiit llockwell, overlooking Two INIedicine Lake 



36 OUR XATIOXAL PARKS. 

Accordiiic; to one famous theory of creation the earth was once 
a o-i'oat o-lobe of <rases, and it has contracted throuah unnnml)ered 
cvcles of time to its present hard rocky self. In the times we speak 
of the earth was still contracting- or growing smaller. Consequently 
its rocky crust continually kept getting too l)ig and, like the orange 
you are sucking, some part of it somewhere was always bulging and 
gi\ ing way. 

That is what must have happened where the Glacier Xational Park 
now is. The bottom of the lake or sea, under the enormous pressure 
against its sides and from below, gradually rose and became dry land. 

Then the land at this point, pi-ol)ably because it was pushed hai'd 
by the contracting land masses on both sides of it. rose in long irregu- 
lar Avavelike masses, forming mountains. Then, when the rock could 
no longer stand the awful strain, it cracked and one edge was thi'ust 
upward and over the other edge and settled into its present position. 

The edge that was thrust over the other was thousands of feet thick. 
It crumbled into peaks, precipices, and gorges. 

Upon these mountains and preciiuces the snows and the rains of 
uncounted centuries have since fallen, and the ice and the waters 
have worn and carved them into the area of distinguished beauty 
that is to-day the Glacier Xational Park. 

Think of this when you go there, and when you hear peo}de speak 
of the Lewis Overthrust you will know what they mean. Tliis range 
of the Ivockies is called the Lewis ^Mountains. 

SCENES OE EXQUISITE BEAUTY 

To jiicture to yourselves this region, imagine a chain of very lofty 
mountains twisting about like a worm, spotted everywhere with snoAv 
fields and bearing glistening glaciers in sixty or more huge hollows. 

Imagine these mountains crumbled and broken on their east sides 
into precipices sometimes three or four thousand feet deep and 
flanked everywhere by lesser peaks and tumbled mountain masses 
of smaller size in whose hollows lie the most beautiful lakes you 
have ever dreamed of. 

Imagine everywhere mountain gorges of the utmost wildness. 
Imagine rushing rivers and waterfalls. Imagine valleys clothed with 
pines right up to timber line where trees can not gi^ow because it is 
too high and in winter too cold and windy. 

Imagine what all this looks like in summer, and then some summer 
go there yourself and you will find that you did not imagine even a 
small part of its real beauty. 

Down from the Continental Divide descend nineteen principal 
valleys, seven on the east side and twelve on the Avest. Of course 
there are verv many smaller valleys tributary to each of these larger 



OUR NATIONAL PARKS. 37 

vallevs. Throiigli these valley's run the rivers from the ghiciers far 
up on the mountains. 

PURCHASED FROM THE INDIANS 

Many of these valle3^s have not 3'et been thoroughly explored. It 
is probable that some of them have never been even entered except by 
Indians, for there are Indians still living during the summers in the 
Glacier Xational Park. The great Blackfeet Indian Reservation, one 
of the many tracts of land set ajxirt for the Indians still remaining 
in this country, adjoins the Glacier Xational Park on the east. 
Xorthwarcl the park adjoins tlie Waterton Lakes Park in Canada. 

There are 250 known lakes. Probably there are small ones in the 
wilder parts which white men have not yet even seen. 

This region was not visited by white men till 1853, when a Govern- 
ment engineer^ exploring for a route to the Pacific Ocean, ascended 
one of the creeks by mistake and returned Avhen he found that no 
railroad could be built there. The next explorers were engineers 
who went in to establish the Canadian boundary line in 18G1. 

In 1890 copper was found at the head of Quartz Creek, and there 
was a rush of prospectors. In 1S9G Congress bought the land east 
of the Continental Divide from the Blackfeet Indians, but not 
enough copper was found to pay for the mining. Since then few 
persons went there but big game hunters till 1910, when it was made 
a national park. 

There are now several very fine hotels and several camps on the 
east side. The west side is wonderfully beautiful, too, and hotels 
and camps are found there also. 

There are a few good roads for automobiles and trails for walking 
and horseback riding. A railroad touches its southern boundary. 

IX 

THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK 

Special Characteristic: Readable Records of Glacial Period 

THE Rocky Mountain Xational Park is in Colorado, about seventy 
miles by road or rail northwest of Denver. Find Longs Peak 
on a good map and you will have the center of the 3G0 square miles 
of snow-topped mountains which constitute the park. 

These mountains are part of the Continental Divide, which is the 
name given to the irregular line of highest land running north and 
south through Xorth America which divides the waters flowing east- 
ward into the Atlantic Ocean from those flowing westward into the 
Pacific. For this reason the people of Colorado call their mountains 
the top of the world. They are scarcely that, for the Himalaya 



38 



OUR NATIONAL PARKS. 




Photograph by Enos Mills 

Looking into the Rocky INIountain National Park from Estes Park 

The long irregular hills in front of the mountains are one of the great glacial 

moraines so characteristic of this National Park 

Mountains in Asia and the Andes in South America are, among 
others, much higher ; but for the United States this picturesque figure 
of speech is sufficiently near the truth. 

This national park is certainly very high up in the air. The sum- 
mer visitors who live at the base of the great mountains, principally 
at the beautiful eastern gateway, a little valley town of many hotels 
which is called Estes Park, are 8,000 feet, or more than a mile and 
a half, above the level of the sea ; while the mountains rise precipi- 
tously nearly a mile, and sometimes more than a mile, higher still. 
Longs Peak, the biggest of them all, rises 14,255 feet above sea level, 
and most of the other mountains in the snowy range, as it is some- 
times called, are more than 12,000 feet high; several are nearly as 
high as Longs Peak. 

AT TIMBER LINE 

The valleys on both side? of this range and those which penetrate 
into its recesses are dotted with lovely parklike glades clothed in a 
profusion of glowing wild flowers and watered with cold streams 
from the mountain snows and glaciers. Forests of pine and silver- 
stemmed aspen separate them. Timber line is more than 11.000 feet 
above sea level, and up to that point the slopes are covered thick and 
close with spruce and fir, growing very straight and very tall. 



OUR NATIOXAL PARKS. 39 

Just at timber line, where the ^yintel• temperature and the fierce 
icy Avinds malve it impossible for trees to grow tall, the spruces lie 
flat on the ground like vines, and presently give place to low birches 
which in their tiu-n give place to small piney growths and finally to 
tough straggling grass, hardy mosses, and tiny Alpine flowers. Grass 
grows in sheltered spots even on the highest peaks, which is fortu- 
nate for the large curve-horned mountain sheep which seek these 
high open places to escape their special enemies, the mountain lions. 

Even at the highest altitudes gorgeousl}^ colored wild flowers grow 
in glory and profusion in sheltered gorges. Even in late September 
large and beautiful columbines are foimd in the lee of protecting 
masses of snow banks and glaciers. 

Novrhere else are the timber-line struggles between the trees and 
the winds more grotesquely exemplified and more easily accessible to 
tourists of average climbing ability. The first sight of luxuriant 
Engelmann spruces creeping closely upon the ground instead of 
rising a hundred and fifty feet or more straight and true as masts 
arouses keenest interest. ISIany trees which defy the winter gales 
grow bent in half circles. Others starting straight in shelter of 
some large rock bend at right angles where they emerge above the 
rock. Others which have succeeded in lifting their heads in spite of 
the winds ha^e not succeeded in growing branches in any direction 
except in the lee of their trunks, and suggest big evergreen dust 
brushes rather than spruces and firs. 

Still others which have fought the winters' gales for years are 
twisted and gnarled l)eyond description — like dwarfs and gnomes of 
an arboreal fairyland. Still others growing in thick groups have 
found strength in union and form low stunted groves covered with 
thick roofs of matted branches bent over by the winds and so inter- 
twined that one can scarcely see daylight overhead — excellent shelter 
for man or animal overtaken by mountain-top storms. 

These familiar sights of timber line are wonderfully picturesque 
and interesting. They never lose their charm, however often seen. 

Above timber line the bare mountain masses rise from 1,000 to 
3,000 feet, often in sheer precipices. Covered with snow in fall, win- 
ter, and spring, and plentifully spattered with snow^ all summer long, 
the vast, bare granite masses, from wdiich, in fact, the Rocky Moun- 
tains got their name, are beautiful beyond description. They are 
losy at sunrise and sunset. During fair and sunny days they show 
all shades of translucent grays and manves and blues. In some 
lights they are almost fairylike in their exquisite delicacy. But on 
stormy days they are cold and dark and forbidding, burying their 
heads in gloomy clouds, from which sometimes the}^ emerge covered 
Avith snow. 



40 OUR NATIONAL PARKS. 

Often one can see a tliuiulerstonn born on the s(|ii:ire granite head 
of T^oniis l*eak. First, out of the bhie sky a slight mist seems to 
gather. In a few moments, while you watch, it becomes a tiny cloud. 
This grows with great I'apidity. In five minutes, perhaps, the moun- 
tain top is hidden. Then, out of nothing apparently, the cloud swells 
and sweeps over the sky. Sometimes in fifteen minutes after the first 
tiny fleck of mist appears it is raining in the valley and possibly 
snowing on the mountain. In half an hour more it has cleared. 

Standing on the summits of these mountains the climber is often 
enveloped in these brief-lived clouds. It is an impressive experience 
to look down upon the top of an ocean of cloud from which the 
greater peaks emerge at intervals. Sometimes the sun is shinning on 
the observer upon the heights while it is raining in the valleys below. 
It is startling to see lighting below you. 

ACCESSIBILITY 

One of the striking features of the Rocky Mountain National Park 
is the easy accessibility of these mountain tops. One may mount 
a horse after early breakfast in the valley, ride up Flattop to enjoy 
one of the great views of the world, and be back for late luncheon. 
The hardy foot traveler may make l-etter time than the horse on 
these mountain trails. One may cross the Continental Divide from 
the hotels of one side to the hotels of the other between early break- 
fast and late dinner. 

In fact, for all-around accessibility there surely is no high moun- 
tain resort of the first order that will (}uite compare with the liocky 
]Mountain National Park. Three railroads to Denver skirts its sides, 
and Denver is less than thirty hours from St. Louis and Chicago. 

ROCKY MOUNTAIN SHEEP 

This range was once a famous hunting ground for large game. 
Lord Dunraven, the English sportsman, visited it yearly to shoot its 
deer, bear, and bighorn sheep, and once he tried to buy it for a private 
game preserve. Now that the Government has made it a national park, 
the protection offered its wild animals will make it in a few years 
one of the most successful wild-animal refuges in the world. 

These lofty rocks are the natural home of the celebrated Pocky 
INIonntain sheep, or l)ighorn. This animal is much larger than any 
domestic sheep. It is powerful and wonderfully agile. When pur- 
sued these sheep, even the lambs, unhesitatingly drop head downward 
off precipitous cliffs sometimes many hundreds of feet liigh. Of 
course, they strike friendly ledges every few feet to break the fall, 
but these ledges often are not wide enough to stand ui)on: they are 
mere rocky excrescences a foot or less in Avidth, from which the sheep 



OUR NATIONAL PAEKS. 



41 




plunge to the next and the next, and so on till they reach good footmg 
in the valley below. So swift is the descent that, seen from below at 
a distance, these pauses 
are often scarcely ap- 
parent. 

The fact that the sheep 
always plunge head first 
has given rise to the fable 
that they land on their 
curved horns. This is 
absolutely untrue ; they 
always strike ledges 
with all four feet held 
close together. The y 
also ascend slopes sur- 
prisingly steep. 

They are more agile 
even than the celebrated 
chamois of the Swiss 
Alps, and are larger, 
more powerful, and 
much handsomer. It is 
something not to be for- 
gotten to see a flock of a 
dozen or twenty mountain sheep making their way along the blown- 
out volcanic crater of Specimen Mountain in the Eocky Mountain 
National Park. 

LONGS PEAK AND THE GLACIER RECORDS 

The prominent central feature of the Rocky ^Mountain Xational 
Park is Longs Peak. It rears a square-cornered boxlike head well 
above the tumbled sea of surrounding mountain tops. It has, unlike 
most great mountains, a distinct architectural form. Standing Avell 
to the east of the range at about its center, it suggests the captain of 
a white-helmeted company; the giant leader of a giant band. It is 
supported on four sides by mountain buttresses, suggesting the stone 
buttresses of a central cathedral spire. From eveiy side it looks the 
same, yet remarkabh' ditlerent. One does not know Longs Peak until 
he has seen it from every side, and then it becomes to him not a 
mountain mass but an architectural creation. 

For many years Longs Peak was considered unclimbable. But at 
last a way was found through an opening in perpendicular rocks 
called, from its shape, the Keyhole, out upon a steep slope leading 
from near its summit far down to a precipice upon its west side. 
The east side of Longs Peak is a nearly sheer precipice almost 2.000 
feet from the extreme top down to Chasm Lake, which was the start- 



I'liotograpla by G. Swanson 

Rocky Moua^tain Sheep, or Bighorn 



42 



OUR XATIOXAL PARKS. 




I'liotograpb by H. T. Cowliui; 

Top of Tyndall Glacier, Rocky Mountain National Park 
On the summit of Flattop Mountain, nearly 13,000 feet altitude 

ing point of a gigantic glacier in times long before man. Chasm 
Lake, which is not difficult to reach from the valley, is one of the 
"wildest lakes in nature. It is frozen eleven months of the year. 

There is no other region in xVmerica where glacial records of such 
prominence are more numerous and more easily reached and studied 
as in the Ivocky Mountain National Park. The Avhole country has 
been fantastically cut and carved by gigantic glaciers of the prehis- 
toric past. Their ancient beds, now grown with forests, their huge 
moraines, their cirques, or starting places, are, next to the xsist moun- 
tains themselves, the most prominent features of the region. 

In fact, these records of the period when this continent was planed 
and carved by the ice are so clearly, so simply written in the rocks 
of this region that the whole story lies plain to the most casual eye. 

X 

GRAND CANYON OF THE COLORADO RIVER 

(National Monument Administered by the Department of Agriculture) 

THE rain falling in the plowed field forms rivulets in the fur- 
I'ows. The rivulets unite in a muddy torrent in the roadside 
gutter. With succeeding showers the gutter wears an ever-deepen- 



OUR NATIONAL PARKS. 43 

ing channel in the soft soil. With the passing season the gutter 
becomes a gnllv. Here and there, in places, its banks nnclermine and 
fall in. Here and there the rivulets from the field Avear tiny tributary 
gullies. Between the breaks in the banks and the tributaries, irregu- 
lar masses of earth remain standing, sometimes resembling mimic 
cliffs, sometimes washed and worn into mimic peaks and spires. 

Such roadside erosion is familiar to us all. A hundred times we 
have idly noted the fantastic water-carved walls and minaretted 
slopes of these ditches. But seldom, perhaps, have we realized that 
the mudd}^ roadside ditch and the world famous Grand Canyon of 
the Colorado are, from Nature's standpoint, identical; that they 
differ only in soil and size. 

The arid States of our great Southwest constitute an enormous 
plateau or table-land from four to eight thousand feet above sea level. 
It is plateau of sun-baked conglomerate and loose soils from which 
emerge occasional mountain masses of more or less solid rock. Rain 
seldom falls, but in winter the snows lie heavy in the mountains. In 
the spring the snows melt and torrents of Avater wear temporary beds 
in the loose soils. Rivers are few and small. Some lose themselves 
in the drying sands. Others gather into a few desert water systems. 
The largest of these is that which, in its lower courses, bears the 
name of the Colorado River. 

In ages before history the Coloi'ado River probably flowed upon 
the surface of this lofty table-land. But, like the roadside ditch, it 
gradually wore an ever-deepening channel. In time, as with the 
roadside ditch, the banks caved in and the current carried the soil 
away. Seismic disturbances may have helped. The ever busy chisels 
of the untiring winds have carved and polished through untold 
centuries. 

AN UNPARALLELED SPECTACLE 

To-day the Colorado flows through a series of self-dug canyons 
hundreds of miles long, a mile deep, and in some places a score of 
miles across the top. The sides of these canyons are carved and 
fretted beyond description, almost beyond belief: and the strata of 
rock and soil exposed by the river's excavations are marvelously 
colored. The blues and grays and mauves and reds are second in 
glory only to the canyon's size and sculpture. The colors change 
with every changing hour. The morning and the evening shadows 
play magician's tricks. 

That portion of the canyon which affords the finest spectacle has 
been set aside by Congress as a national monument. It is situated 
in northeastern Arizona and is called the Grand Canyon of the Colo- 
rado. It constitutes one of the most astonishing phenomena in nature 
and one of the stupendous sights of the world. 



44 OUR KATIONAL PARKS. 

The Colorado River is formed, in southern T^tah, by the confluence 
of the Grand and the Green Hirers. The Grand drains the ^Yestern 
Eockies in Colorado. The Green rises in northern Utah, and drains 
also a corner of Wyoming. Together they gather the waters of three 
hundred thousand square miles of mountains. "Ten million cascade 
brooks," Avrite J. W. Powell, "unite to form a hundred rivers beset 
with cataracts; a hundred roaring rivers unite to form the Colorado, 
a mad. turbid stream." 

Southwest from Utah, the Colorado passes into Arizona through 
the noble INIarble Canyon and swings west between the mile-high 
walls of the mighty Grand Canyon. Thence, emerging into more 
open country, it skirts Xevada and California, cuts through ]\Iexico 
and deposits its vast burden of mud in the Gulf of California. 

MOSAIC OF DESCRIPTION" 

"Who can describe the Grand Canyon? 

" jNIore mysterious in its depth than the Himalayas in their height." 
writes John C. Van Dyke. " the Grand Canyon remains not the eighth 
but the fi'st wonder of the world. There is nothing like it." 

" Looking down more than half a mile into this fifteen-by-two- 
hundred-and-eighteen-mile paint pot." writes Joaquin Miller, " I con- 
tinually ask: Is any fifty miles of INIother Earth that I have known 
as fearful, or any part as fearful, as full of glory, as full of God? " 

" To the eye educated to any other," writes Charles Dudley Warner, 
"it may l)e shocking, grotesque, incomprehensible; but those who 
have long and carefully studied the Grand Canyon do not hesitate 
to pronounce it by far the most sublime of all earthly spectacles." 

" The Grand Canyon of Arizona fills me with awe," writes Theo- 
dore Roosevelt. "It is beyond comparison — beyond description; 
absolutely unparalleled throughout the wide world." 

"A pageant of ghastly desolation and yet of frightful vitality, such 
as neither Dante nor Milton in their most sublime conceptions ever 
even approached," writes William Winter. " Your heart is moved 
with feeling that is far too deep for words." 

"It has a thousand differing moods," writes Hamlin Garland. 
" No one can know it for what it is who has not lived with it every 
day of the year. It is like a mountain range — a cloud to-day, a wall 
of marble to-morrow. When the light falls into it, harsh, direct, and 
searching, it is great, but not beautiful. The lines are chaotic, dis- 
turbing — but wait ! The clouds and the sunset, the moonrise and 
the storm will transform it into a splendor no mountain range can 
surpass. Peaks will shift and glow, walls darken, crags take fire, 
and gray-green mesas, diuily seen, take on the gleam of opalescent 
lakes of mountain water." 



OUR NATlOiSTAL PARKS. 45 

" It seems a gigantic statement for even Nature to malce all in 
one mighty stone word," writes John jNInir. " AVildness so Godful, 
cosmic, primeval, bestows a new sense of earth's beauty and size. 
* * * But the colors^ the living, rejoicing colors^ chanting, morn- 
ing and evening, in chorus to heaven! Whose brush or pencil, how- 
ever lovingly inspired, can give us these ^ In the supreme flaming 
glory of sunset the whole canyon is transfigured, as if all the life and 
light of centuries of sunshine stored up in the rocks was now being 
poured forth as from one glorious fountain, flooding both earth and 
sky." 

DIFFICULT TO COMPREHEND 

Even the most superficial description of this enormous spectacle 
may not be put in words. The wanderer upon the rim overlooks a 
thousand square miles of pyramids and minarets carved from the 
painted depths. Many miles away and more than a mile below the 
level of his feet he sees a tiny silver thread which he knows is the 
giant Colorado. He is numbed by the spectacle. At first he can 
not comprehend it. There is no measure, nothing which the eye can 
grasp, the mind fathom. 

It may be hours before he can even slightly adjust himself to the 
titanic spectacle, before it ceases to be utter chaos, and not until then 
does he begin to exclaim in rapture. And he never wholly adjusts 
himself, for with dawning appreciation comes growing wonder. 
Comprehension lies always just beyond his reach. But it will help 
to descend one of these trails which zigzag down the precipitous 
cliffs to the river's muddy edge. 

The Grand Canyon was first reported to the civilized world by the 
early Spanish explorers in 1540. It was first described in 1851 by 
the Sitgreaves Expedition. The War Department explored the navi- 
gable Avaters from the south in 1858, but stopped at the foot of the 
canyons. 

MAJOR POWELL'S FIRST EXPLORATION 

Xo exploration of the Grand Canyon was made until 1809, when 
Major J. W. Powell, who afterwards became Director of the United 
States Geological Survey, made a perilous passage with a party of 
nine men in four small boats. This exploration constitutes one of the 
most romantic adventures in American history. Until then it was 
unknown. 

''Yet enough had been seen to foment rumor," Major Powell wrote 
in his report to the Smithsonian Institution, "and many wonderful 
stories have been told in the hunter's cabin and prospector's camp. 
Stories Avere related of parties entering the gorge in boats and being 
carried down with fearful velocity into whirli:)ools, where all Avere 
overAvhelmed in the abyss of Avaters ; others, of underground passages 



46 OUR NATIOXAL I'AKKS, 

for the great river, into which boats had passed never to be seen again. 
It was currentl}' believed that the river was lost under the rocks for 
several Imiidrcd miles. There were other accounts of great falls 
whose roaring music could be heard on distant mountain summits.'' 

The passage, while it developed none of these reported dangers, 
was sufficiently perilous. Boats were repeatedly upset in the rapids, 
food was nearly exhausted, and the adventurers many times barely 
escaped destruction. Four men who deserted the party, terrified, 
attempted to climb the Avails, but were never heard from again. 

The Indian legend of the Grand Canyon is picturesque. There was 
a great chief who mourned the death of his wife, and would not be 
comforted. To him came Ta-vwoats, one of the Indian gods, and 
told him that his wife was in a happier land to which he would take 
him that he might see for himself, if upon his return he would cease 
to mourn. The chief promised. Then Ta-vwoats made a trail 
through the mountains that guarded that beautiful land. 

This trail was the canyon gorge of the Colorado. Through it Ta- 
vwoats led the chief; and when they had returned the god exacted 
from the chief a promise that he Avould tell no one of its joys lest, 
through discontent with the circumstances of this world, others 
should desire to go there. Then Ta-vwoats rolled a river into the 
gorge, a mad, raging stream, that should engulf any that might 
attempt to enter thereby. This river was the Colorado. 

XI 

THE HOT SPRINGS RESERVATION 

Special Characteristic: Curative Hot Springs Possessing- Radio- Active 

Properties 

AS different, almost, as possible from the great scenic national 
parks which we have been considering, but in its own particu- 
lar way as extraordinary as any of them, the Hot Springs Reserva- 
tion in the Ozark JNIountains of Arkansas must be accorded a distin- 
guished place among American resorts of national character and 
ownership. The reservation is the oldest national park, having re- 
ceived that status in 183-2, forty years before the wonders of the 
Yellowstone first inspired Congress with the idea that scenery was a 
national asset deserving of preservation for the use and enjoyment 
of succeeding generations. 

No aesthetic consideration was involved in this early act of national 
conservation. Congress was inspired only by the undoubted, but at 
that time inexplicable, power of these waters to alleviate certain 
bodily ills. The motive was to retain these uni(|ue waters in public 
possession in order that they should be available to all persons for all 
time at a minimum, even a nominal, cost. 



OUK XATIOXAL PAKKS. 



47 




Hot ypKiNGs Reservation', Showing Bath Housbj'Row and the Army and 
Navy General Hospital 

The low, irregular mountain masses known as the Ozarks cover the 
greater part of southern Missouri and overlap northern Arkansas, 
where, in marked contrast Avith the surrounding plains, they become 
higher, more rugged, and heavily timbered.' 

The country is one of much beauty. Hgt vSprings Mountain, from 
whose sides flow the cleansing waters, is about fifty miles west by 
south from Little Eock. Here, as early as 1804, began the settlement 
which has developed into the handsome prosperous city of KKOOO 
inhabitants known as Hot Springs. It is a resort city, made wealthy 
from the many thousands of visitors seeking health from the adjacent 
Government springs and pleasure ii^ the high and beautiful neigh- 
borhood country with its excellent drives and woodland paths, its 
mountain and river views, its social, gayeties, and its exceptional golf. 

Adjoining the borders of the (^i'ty at the mountain's foot lies the 
reservation, a tract of 912 acres inclosing all the forty-six hot springs. 
Eleven bathhouses are in the reservation and a dozen more in the 
city, all under Government regulation. There are also cold-water 
si:)rings of curative value. In the city are many hotels and boarding 
houses with rates ranging from lowest to highest. The Department 
of the Interior has spent altogether more than a million dollars on 
the development of the reservation. The reservation contains, also, 
an Army and Xavy Hospital. 



48 



OUR NATIONAL PAEKS. 



Dr. William P. l*arks, superintendent of the reservation, states in 
his annual report for 1915 that while the baths are constantly given^ 
for such ailments as seem to be benefited in the experience of phj'si- 
cians Avho have prescribed their use and carefully observed the re- 
sults, there are still many physicians throughout the country who, 
never having themselves tested the springs, hesitate to send patients 
there. 

"Xo physician Avho is thorough and looks for the best results from 
the medicines he gives," says Dr. Parks, " would tliink of prescribing 
a drug wliose physiological effects and therapeutic value had not 
been scientifically proven and described." 

A perfect explanation, this, of a natural scientific conservatism. 

The War Department's years of experience in the Army and Navy 
Hospital, however, is thoroughly convincing, and the medical staff 
officially affirm the waters' marked curative value for rheumatic and 
many grave ailments more or less kindred. 

Recently the Department of the Interior has established on the 
reservation the Oertel system of graduated exercise which has proved 
so successful at the celebrated springs of Bad Xauheim, Germany. 
Courses have been laid out on the mountain slopes with distances 
scientifically established and plainly marked by monuments. The 
length and character of the walks are determined by ph^^sicians 
according to the condition and ]^r()gress of the patient. 

INTERESTING INDIAN TRADITIONS 

Tradition has it that the curative properties of the hot springs 
were known to the Indians long before the Spanish invasion. It is 
probable that they were known to De Soto, who died in 1542 less than 
a hundred miles away. It is tradition that Indian tribes warred for 
their possession but that finally a truce was made which enabled all 
tribes to avail alike of their waters. 

GoA'crnment analyses of the waters disclose more than twenty 
chemical constituents, but it is not these nor their combination to 
which is principally attributed the water's unquestioned virtue in 
many diseased conditions, but to their remarkable radioactivity. The 
Department of the Interior will send full information to inquirers. 







W97 






♦ ^ti4r* 




^^' 





















*o« .0 









'.• . 4^^\ V 



<^ '^^Tri** r5- 




^*i*C, 



♦ r^^ 



S^^. 
















V 







1 1> • 







-. ^-^^ c^ ,^^ 



..^ /^^^\!i'^'L r^ ^ 




^^ ^^/}h\^J^' ^ 
















. • • aO 



rA^ 
.^^ 






<>^ ..•v/'^c*. 



».,o* .0 ^ft* •" vv^ °^ *•-» A° ^ "' ^-e*^ 



"o- 



WtRT 
BOOKBINDING 

CrsnrviUe Pi. 



